Bharti, Cisco Join Hands to Target B2B Segment

Telecom service provider Bharti Airtel and Cisco have announced the formation of a business alliance meant to to help drive growth for Indian enterprises.

The alliance aims to combine the strengths of Airtel s role as a network service provider and Cisco s Internet Protocol (IP) technologies and expertise to create and sell in a phased manner a set of unique products and services. This includes managed data services, hosted unified communications, connected branch services and Cisco TelePresence.

Airtel and Cisco plan to appoint a dedicated team to develop and manage these services to fulfill the requirements of customers across small, medium and large enterprises. Sanjay Mittal, senior vice president from Bharti Airtel, will lead the initiative with the support of a Governing Board comprising executives from both companies.

Commenting on the alliance, Manoj Kohli, CEO and joint managing director, Bharti Airtel, said: "With this alliance, we will expand our market coverage in the rapidly growing managed services market and simplify the purchase process for our mutual customers by facilitating joint sales, partner planning and customer engagements. After achieving leadership in the B2C segments, we are pursuing leadership in the B2B segments assiduously."

Wim Elfrink, chief globalisation officer and executive vice president, Cisco Services, said, "Building on the government’s commitment to rapid broadband deployment, we will together create and deliver transformational services for large enterprise and small and medium-sized business customers. This collaborative relationship is built on the strategy that we do not simply give our customers what we have; instead we create what they need by developing new business models and services adapted to our customers’ diverse needs."

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